<p>The tremendous response to his radio shows led to standing-room-only theatre performances and cross-country tours, but Rudy Vallée claimed it was just good luck and timing.</p>
<p><span class="deck">The great Czech composer arrived on these shores a century ago and wrote some of his most enduring masterpieces here. Perhaps more important, he understood better than any American of the day where our musical destiny lay.</span></p>
<p><span class="deck">It’s the fastest-growing music in America. It’s a three-billion-dollar-plus industry. Cable stations devoted to it reach 62,000,000 homes. And yet, says one passionate follower of country music past and present, its story is over. </span></p>
<p><span class="deck">You’ve probably never heard of them, but these ten people changed your life. Each of them is a big reason why your world today is so different from anyone’s world in 1954.</span></p>
<p><span class="deck">He was in the vanguard of that wave of young Britons who, in the 1960s, stormed our shores and gave us back our musical heritage.</span></p>
<p><span class="deck">For the brilliant songwriter behind the Beach Boys, the endless summer gave way to a very hard winter. Now, he is back, with a work that wants to be no less than a musical history of the American dream.</span></p>
<p><span class="deck">Was Hal Blaine one of your favorite musicians back in the 1960s? How about Larry Knechtel? Carol Kaye? Oh, yes, they were.</span></p>
<p>For most of the 1800s, whites in blackface performed in widely popular minstrel shows, creating racist stereotypes that endured for more than a century.</p>
<p>The blind guitarist and singer from Deep Gap, North Carolina transformed American music by blending bluegrass, folk, country, blues, and gospel.</p>
